


your left-hand man

by hitlikehammers



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: 5 Times, 5+1 Things, Anal Fingering, Anal Fisting, Bucky Barnes Reclaims Himself, Bucky Barnes's Metal Arm, Emotional Porn, Emotional Sex, Explicit Sexual Content, Fingerfucking, Fisting, Fluff, Hand Jobs, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Massage, Multiple Orgasms, Porn with Feelings, Post-Battle Displays of Affection, Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Protective Bucky Barnes, Rimming, Romance, Scissoring, Self-Acceptance, True Love, field medicine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-11
Updated: 2014-12-30
Packaged: 2018-03-01 01:54:44
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 17,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2755217
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hitlikehammers/pseuds/hitlikehammers
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Five times Steve was very appreciative of Bucky's left arm, and one time Bucky figured, <i>yeah, sure, fine: that metal thing can stick around</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Hand

**Author's Note:**

> This story ended up being way too long, on the whole, for me to justify it as a 5+1 type of deal that was posted in one fell swoop; it was supposed to just be some random porn, but then it grew serious parts, and then it grew feelings, and then—surprise, surprise!—it needed to be broken up into chapters to make any real sense of it.
> 
> So: will be updated regularly, won't take too long, will hopefully be a fun ride. My sincerest thanks to [weepingnaiad](http://archiveofourown.org/users/weepingnaiad/), as ever, for looking it over and encouraging the idea when I bemoaned the fact that I was _writing arm-porn, what even, stop me before I hurt someone!_ (Even though it's not _all_ sexing-porn, the rest is totally emotion-porn and... yeah. Arm-porn, what have you done?)
> 
> Likewise, the title is credit entirely to [this song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJ_1HMAGb4k).

“Buck, no,” Steve breathes it, gasps it, eyes wide as saucers. “No.”

That broad is chest heaving, and it’s the size of it that keeps Bucky from slipping back, from watching traitor-lungs trying to rob him of everything he holds close, everything he needs where it lives inside that skinny body, that too-strong-to-be-so-goddamned- _weak_ heart beneath him.

But it’s a broad chest, here. They’re okay.

It’d be a lie to pretend that he remembers everything. Even if Hydra had never happened, even if he’d reached the ripe ol’ age of 30 by the late 1940s like he ought to have, he wouldn’t have remembered everything. So while the serum he’s got does most of the heavy lifting in the memory department, in the now, Bucky’s not bothered anymore. He never would have remembered everything, and besides: he remembers what counts.

And what fucking _counts_ , right now, is that Bucky knows he’s jerked Steve off about a million goddamn times, and never once has Steve asked him to hold off, and maybe he doesn’t remember everything.

But this—Steve’s dick, thicker than it was when they started, when they first made that leap, but with the same perfect curve it’s always had, with the same twitch-response to the pad of Bucky’s thumb at the tip as it ever made, as it ever had: _this_ , Bucky’s pretty damn sure he remembers just fine.

Maybe it shows in his eyes, or maybe it’s just that Steve knows him, that Steve can read all the things that don’t have tells—maybe. But Steve’s still gasping, still wide-eyed and swallowing hard, Bucky’s hand loose around the heavy length of Steve’s shaft, still: maybe Steve sees it, maybe Steve hears it or feels it, when Bucky’s heart trips, stumbles on down to his stomach, to the soles of his feet.

“ _No_ ,” Steve’s jaw goes slack, his eyes flash and Bucky would laugh, probably, at the desperate look on that face if he weren't so damned confused. But then Steve leans up, reaches for Bucky’s chin and fuck all, but Bucky leans into it and lets that touch suffuse his whole body, lets it coax his heart back up where it belongs to beat that cage of his ribs like a madman, like a beast: like it’s Steve’s—’cause it is—and it wants out to hold to him, to cling to him, to stay. 

“I don’t,” Steve stammers, fingers stroking the lines of Bucky’s cheekbones on either side, and Bucky’s holding his breath and can’t seem to quit, not until Steve tips his head and kisses Bucky full on, forces him to gasp if he wants to stay conscious, if he wants to keep _this_ , here and now.

“I don’t mean _no_ ,” Steve rushes to explain. “Jesus, yes, all of the fucking _yes_ , Buck.”

And he jumbles the words between both their lips a little, but the need to say them seems at odds with a need to taste Bucky, to drink him in, and Bucky’s blood sears with that in a way that promises he’ll never have to know the cold again, so it’s okay. 

It’s _okay_.

He stretches fingers down to tease Steve’s sac, just the ghost of a touch, and Steve shivers, mouth open, eyes fluttering closed, and yeah; yeah.

 _That_.

“Don’t fucking stop, never fucking stop,” Steve murmurs, mouth gaping as he cants his hips into Bucky’s touch, but it’s controlled in a way Bucky wants to get rid of; it’s holding back, and Bucky doesn’t have a goddamned clue as to _why_. 

“Just,” and Steve’s hand shoots out to grab Bucky’s wrist, to still the hand Bucky’s got poised to roll Steve’s ball against the palm, and Bucky’s gaze flickers up to meet that infinite blue, and it’s waiting for him, and Bucky can’t help but do what he always does: fall fully, and get real fucking lost in it.

“Don’t stop,” Steve breathes, and there’s a world in those eyes, and Bucky’s convinced that’s the world that brought him back from the dark, that’s the place that Bucky pulled himself from hell to see again; but those eyes have got an edge to them, too, just now, and Bucky’s gaze narrows, sharpens to find what it means, to read it true: apprehension, and it’d be heartbreaking if Steve wasn’t slowly dragging Bucky’s left hand from in between his thighs to rest at the center of Steve’s chest instead; if Steve wasn’t taking the touch he’d pressed to Bucky’s cheek and trailing it over the scars at his shoulder, mapping that terrain with a tenderness that makes Bucky feel faint, every time.

It’d be heartbreaking, or just about, if Steve so much as blinked, if Steve wasn’t staring at him wholly and offering his soul behind those fucking endless eyes.

“Don’t stop,” Steve rasps again. “Just,” and Bucky feels the pressure of his touch as it moves down, as fingers fold between metal and grasp, and clutch, and hold.

“Other hand,” Steve breathes out, weighed down with significance, with wanting, and the apprehension, the hesitation—Bucky sees it now, where it meets the edge of lust, where it bobs in Steve’s throat with a thick, heady need; pounds under Bucky’s right hand like armageddon and the tides.

Oh.

“Use your other hand,” Steve commands it, begs it, pleads, and oh.

 _Oh_.

His heart leaps up this time, lodged tight at the base of his neck; he holds Steve’s gaze, doesn’t so much as think to break it, and he pretends to need the time to suss out whether Steve’s serious—he doesn’t need the time. He can see it.

He knows.

He needs the time for himself, to convince his hand, that _thing_ : to convince _himself_ to reach from the left.

It takes time, and Steve gives it, and their chests brush when Steve gasps in, heavy and full when Bucky draws a cool fingertip down the still-hard shaft of Steve’s cock, following the curl of the veins.

“Fuck, _c'mon_ Buck,” Steve whines, shudders, and his eyes don’t close, not yet, but if Bucky wasn’t sure, he’s damn sure now: Steve’s eyes burn hot like iron, whiter near the edges, near the center, fever bright, all ready to snap supernova if Bucky moves, if Bucky gives.

And shit, but yes. Bucky’s always gonna give; for Steve.

For Steve, Bucky gives everything. Every time.

He opens his palm, strokes slow toward the tip, and gently, carefully—deliberate, with his pulse roaring and his own cock aching—he grasps the length.

And Bucky’s never given much attention, much thought to the intricacies of the grip, the way the plating shifts and the mechanisms whir: not at this level, not with such precision. So it’s as much a surprise to him as it is to Steve when the slow increase of pressure involves the subtlest, the most infinitesimal, microscopic shifts, and Bucky’s never been grateful for the sensation of pressure over actual feeling, not once, but here and now Steve’s writhing, Steve’s feeling every tiny motion that telegraphs exactitude, that takes the want that fogs Bucky’s mind and makes it purpose, makes it action and the thing attached to him at the shoulder may be a trial, an abomination, but Bucky can feel the pulsing in the flesh he’s holding, could close his eyes and trace the flow of the blood if he tried and fuck, _fuck_ : he is taking Steve _apart_.

“Oh fuck, yes,” Steve rasps, shakes, and Bucky remembers this, remembers Steve taut like a bow-string and trembling and sweat-slick in the best possible way, Bucky remembers.

Never this fast, though. Never so quick.

He smirks, leans down to nip at Steve’s lip but he doesn’t get there, doesn’t get to tease because Steve is surging up into him—his mouth and his give and his touch in all the places he can have it, and Steve is arching into him, Steve’s hips are beyond even that ironclad control, that stage-honed poise, and Steve’s not devouring him so much as begging to _be_ devoured and Bucky will oblige, Bucky will give and if his tongue works the same rhythm as his fist, well, it seems to be working.

Bucky registers the change in temperature, the change in texture, feels as Steve starts to leak, starts to twitch, starts to keen, and fuck, _yes_. 

That’s working just fine.

The grooves in the joint, at the points of articulation—they’re smooth, and at first they don’t matter, but Bucky’s starting to lose his own composure in the face of Steve unraveling this way, unfettered and flush and so beautiful Bucky can barely _see_ for the way he shines: but they catch on the upstroke and Steve hisses out a breath, sharp, and Bucky freezes, and he hates that thing, that hand, that arm, not _his_ —

“God,” Steve wrings out from raw vocal cords, and Bucky’s chest clenches before he can open his mouth to apologize, before he can unwrap his hold, and—

“ _So_ good, Buck,” Steve moans, and Bucky’s eyes shoot up, and it’s then that he realizes that Steve’s still rock hard at his touch, that Steve’s chest is heaving all the heavier, that his eyes are damn well black with pure fucking hunger, and Bucky doesn’t move the hand, not yet—it’s Steve who’s twisting, who’s forcing the slight roughness to catch on the oversensitive flesh of his cock, but Bucky doesn’t think Steve’s in any state to notice who’s setting the pace—Steve’s mindless, Steve’s trembling, Steve’s looking at him like he’s the universe and its spiralling and Bucky’s a fixed point to focus on while the walls come down.

 _Jesus_. 

“Fuck, you’re so good,” Steve breathes; “it’s so,” and Bucky’s rolling the line of his little finger into the dip between Steve’s balls, just enough to make him damn near howl with it, with the play of cool and burning where friction’s heated the metal unevenly, where both seem to drive Steve insane.

“I can’t, I can’t even,” Steve’s panting, and his breathing’s so uncoordinated, so heavy and full that Bucky can feel it closer than his own, Bucky’s breathing Steve’s exhales deeper than he knows how to stand and its dizzying, and Bucky’s pretty fucking sure he could come like this, he might do just that if they keep going, if Steve keeps fighting the absolute thrashing that wants to take his limbs by digging his heels into the mattress, by dragging his thigh innocently against Bucky’s own erection.

“It’s like,” and Steve’s breathless; “It’s not like anything I’ve, I’m—” 

And Bucky’s fingers are spreading precum down Steve’s cock, letting it lead the slide of his hand until the slickness gives and the surface sticks, and Steve cries out, whimpers choked with screams each time, and Bucky’s watching him, watching the agony that gleams on his features, that outglows the sunrise and he’s been in love since before he can recall, and he remembers what it feels like to be in love with _Steve_ , but this, _this_ right here is...

“Stevie,” Bucky breathes out, because if he’d never remembered another word, another thing, he knows that to have got his Stevie back would have been enough. “Stevie, you—”

“ _Bucky_.”

And Steve’s coming, hard and all over, shooting and shaking and Bucky works him long through the crest of his climax, and if a few milky drops stray high enough for Bucky to catch on his lips, then he takes it: he takes it before he takes Steve’s mouth and sucks that tongue like he pulls that cock until its sated, until its soft against his palm. 

“Christ,” Steve hisses, slurs out, still hazy, heart still pounding where Bucky’s working his way down Steve’s body, now, cleaning him thoroughly with lips and tongue and teeth where it’s warranted.

“I,” Steve swallows, slowly settling back into the moment, and Bucky can trace the uptick in his pulse, the extra heat that blossoms under his mouth: the tinge of embarrassment that Bucky loves, because it’s gorgeous and endearing and warm, but not here. “Buck, I’m…”

It doesn’t belong _here_.

“Gorgeous,” Bucky cuts in, closes his mouth around Steve’s nipple. “You’re goddamn gorgeous, and I’m kinda banking on the fact that you’re super all the way through,” he smiles, into the curve of muscle, remembers tasting the curl of a rib there, once upon a time, and this is just as perfect, really; just as sweet; “so you’ll be ready to go again before you can catch your fuckin’ breath.”

Bucky kisses the hard bud beneath his lips gently, only just lets his teeth drag against the flesh so Steve shivers, so Steve forgets ever thinking to be shy about letting go, about coming straight out the gate. 

“I’ll try not to cut it so short, next time,” Steve adds ruefully, burying fingers in Bucky’s hair.

“Cut it as short as you like,” Bucky murmurs into Steve’s chest, mouthing shapes and trails that make no sense, save that they let Bucky savor the of him taste against his tongue. “Could set a record, at that kinda pace.” 

He lifts his head, looks up at Steve from under lashes and smirks, all suggestion, still half-hard where he’s pressed against Steve’s groin as he grinds down slow and relishes the whimper that follows.

“Whadya say, Stevie,” he purrs, draws it out; “how ‘bout we put our names in the record books for somethin’ _real_ impressive, this time around?”

He dips his head to scrape teeth against the jump of Steve’s blood between the collarbones, and he’s met with a yelp that makes him cackle, and the breath of a word that makes him melt, just a little:

“Jerk.”

Bucky grins, laves up the column of Steve’s neck to pop slick lips against the jugular with the only response there is to give:

“ _Punk_.”

The feel of Steve’s laughter, breathy and honest and shaking through his bones: the feel of it is pure bliss, spells redemption in a way Bucky didn’t realize he was waiting for, dispels a breath in his lungs he hadn’t realized was held, as Steve’s heart beats around the sound of it, as his breath moves through the joy of it, and it makes Bucky feel light, feel new, feel _home_.

The feel of Steve’s laughter against him is a gift he can’t have earned, but will hold to until the world gives way.

His eyes are closed as he lies flat, splayed along the length of Steve’s body, exploring with open mouth and needy palms the architecture of Steve’s body; always fascinating, always enthralling and breathtaking and unveiled anew, no matter how many times Bucky charts it, no matter how he knows it like his own flesh and blood.

His lips are massaging slow against the definition of Steve’s abs when he feels it, when his mouth lifts at the corners and he lets his weight shift at the hips to brush, to tempt the lift of Steve’s hardening cock toward Bucky’s own.

“Oh, _there_ we go,” Bucky murmurs, wet against the pale hairs, near-invisible on Steve’s stomach as he grinds down just a little; looks up, quirks a brow. 

“Up for round two?” he asks, full of hopeful banter and a fuckton of cheek.

“I’m up for as many rounds as you can stand.” Steve’s voice is huskier, deeper than Bucky’s expecting: solemn almost, and Bucky lifts up on the heels of his palms to look at Steve straight on, and it damn well steals his breath when he meets that gaze: so bright. So full.

“I’m up for,” Steve swallows, hard. “For,” and Bucky hears the way that’s not the word he wants; Bucky hears the way the word he wants is longer, means so much more: always.

And yeah, yeah: that. Bucky kisses Steve’s sternum and does his best to say it better than with words, because yes, fuck, _yes_. _Exactly_ that. 

“You’re lucky.” Bucky lifts himself up again, grinning down at Steve as he wriggles metal fingers so they catch in stray shafts of light; “This thing doesn’t get tired quick.” 

And it’s still a thing, it’s still not _right_ but maybe, just maybe Bucky’d be willing to own it if it’s gonna leave Steve boneless, if it’s gonna make Steve fall apart like this so that Bucky can love on all the pieces while he puts him back together, all mouth against the salt of that skin, all tongue against the hum of that pulse. 

Maybe. 

“So you might just eat those words, Rogers,” Bucky huffs, soft and just a little serious, a little melancholic, still entirely fond as he lifts his hand, brushes Steve’s sweat-mussed hair from out his eyes. “Y’never did know when to cut your losses.”

Steve reaches, curls his own hand around Bucky’s, threads their fingers together and drags Bucky’s palm to his lips.

“Had enough of losses, Buck,” he speaks against warm skin, but then he lets go, gropes for Bucky’s left hand and brings it up, kisses its center just as sure and fuck, _fuck_ , but Bucky can almost feel it the same—different sensations, but it does the same thing to his chest, regardless of which hand, which side.

“Kinda countin’ on you making sure I don’t have to stand ‘em anymore,” Steve breathes, and Bucky swallows; allows himself the moments to relish the inhale, the exhale, the thrum of life around that rush and to know, beyond all reason, that this is his.

“I’m kinda countin’ on you losing your goddamn mind in a second here,” Bucky murmurs, mustering the heat again, forcing it to overcome the tightness in his throat as he shifts, straddles Steve’s thighs with his knees and lowers himself, painfully slow, flush against Steve’s body and lined perfectly at the groin, and Steve’s eyes stay on him as his breathing picks up speed, and Bucky hovers, achingly close, until Steve can’t stand it, can’t take it.

“Ain’t gettin’ any younger,” Steve finally growls, arching up to press his cock—rock-hard again and wanting—to the swell of Bucky’s balls.

“Smart-mouthed little fuck,” Bucky grins. “Shoot your load like you’re fourteen again, and we’ll talk about who’s gettin’ _younger_.”

Steve’s eyes widen, mouth ajar as he tries to splutter a comeback, but can’t seem to think straight enough over the straining of his dick; can only choke out: “ _Asshole_.”

And Bucky laughs, inspired, as he holds himself up with his right palm spread wide against Steve’s ribs, and he doesn’t even think before reaching with his left hand, teasing the sensitive splay of skin that stretches back behind Steve’s sac toward the cleft of his ass. And he can feel it, when the body beneath him starts to shudder, when the heart under his hand starts to quake: when the curve of his mouth turns wicked; he can feel it, and he leans in quick as his wrist turns swift, abandons the road to Steve’s opening and gets a low, plaintive whine in response that echoes out until he takes both their lengths together, lets a thumb smear across both their tips and drag messy, viscous, perfect as he wraps metal fingers round the shafts, catches Steve’s lower lip between his teeth as he taunts, breathless:

“Another time, babe.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time, we have more-feelings-than-physical porn, with Bucky's Metal Arm starring as The Thing That Saves Steve's Self-Sacrificing, Stupid Ass.


	2. Plates

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This time around: less sexing, more saving? Something like that.

“ _Bucky_!”

And Bucky can hear the heart in Steve’s throat where it bleeds too close to his words, to that name on his lips as he screams, all fading with the rush, doppler effect on the wind, drowned in adrenaline as Bucky dives from where he’d been picking off the enemy—killer fucking robots, will that shit ever get old enough to go _away_?—from a higher vantage point, but that was before he saw the onslaught in pursuit, coming up on Steve from behind and Steve was already overwhelmed head-on. He wouldn’t be able to fight on two fronts.

So of course Bucky does the only thing he can think to, the only thing he can live with: he leaps from the rooftop and grabs from the left to slow his momentum against brick walls in the descent; he swings, lets the arm whine against the way he demands it to propel him, to land him straight where he needs to be, in enough time to intercept the bullet that was meant for the cervical curve of Steve’s goddamned spine.

“What the _hell_ are you doing?” Steve shouts over his shoulder to where Bucky’s pressed up close against his back, words muffled over the staccato play of impact against the plates of the arm, heavy rain as Bucky turns, ducks, spins, leans, dances the way they taught him: different from Natasha, from what he’s heard of the Red Room, but no less effective.

“Coverin’ your ass, you fuckin’ idiot,” Bucky answers, short, fucking pissed because this always happens, Steve forgetting to keep his own bones unbroken, forgets to keep his own heart beating and his own blood in his veins; no sense of goddamned self-preservation and of all the things that could somehow stay the same, of course _that’s_ one of them—

Bucky sees enemy fire incoming; cocks his elbow and then straightens the arm quick to catch incoming lead between the plates before turning, extending, flinging the bullet wide. 

“They’da gotten you right in the back of the neck,” Bucky tacks on, rotates the forearm to deflect five well-aimed shots in a single swipe. “That shield’s big, Stevie, but it don’t watch your back.”

“Which is where I point out that _the shield_ won’t fucking _die_ from a well-aimed shot—” Steve starts, but gets cut off by the need to take out a wave of bots with a sling of said overgrown discus; Bucky’s eyes narrow, and he’s launching, flattening his body over Steve’s undefended frame, reaching with his right hand to grab the shield as it flies back but focusing first and foremost on keeping all vital areas on Steve’s body protected; doesn't even flinch when he takes a bullet to the right flank—superficial. He presses full against Steve’s frame, despite the fact that Steve’s starting to recover from the shock of Bucky’s body pinning him and starts fighting for purchase, but Bucky’s not giving way until he knows it’s safe, holds Steve down until he can turn, until he can flip the shield back to its owner and rain three-hundred-and-sixty degrees of hellfire from his Skorpion to clear the immediate threat until Steve’s back on his feet.

Bucky doesn’t have to look behind him as he takes his place at Steve’s back, doesn’t have to see it to know that Steve’s livid, but that’s okay. Steve’s safe, and he can be as pissy as he wants to be, ‘cause that means he’s still breathing enough to manage it.

And that’s what counts.

“You’re right. The shield won’t die,” Bucky says, eying up the next wave of tin-can assailants, reaching for Steve’s biceps and twisting so he has the right angle to send the shots back where they came.

“But neither will _I_ , nine times out of ten,” Bucky adds pointedly, tone dry as the fucking desert before his brow furrows and he chances a glare at Steve before he shoots straight down the advancing enemy lines. “But if you’re tryin’ to tell me that _you_ woulda survived a kill-shot to the brainstem?”

Stark flies overhead and takes out a whole group of the robots with an explosion that rocks the ground beneath them, and Bucky’s reaching for Steve, left arm raised to cover just as Steve’s curling toward him, and they’re low to the ground, pressed tight against the rain of shrapnel that clangs against the arm plates, against star-spangled vibranium. 

“If you think that, Stevie,” Bucky breathes, near enough that he knows Steve can feel it, can hear it over the din; “then you’ve obviously been keeping too much of the stupid for yourself to still be thinkin’ straight.”

Steve’s eyes are big, and bright when they meet Bucky’s, and there’s exasperation, and fondness, and terror, and anger and love in them so deep, just then, that Bucky has to rein himself in real damned hard to not reach out and kiss Steve senseless, then and there; but he can’t, so he exhales, and he meets Steve’s gaze with all that feeling returned in equal measure before their breathing syncs and they read the timing in each other’s eyes.

_One. Two…_

They stand in tandem, chest to chest, Steve’s shield held to Bucky’s back as Bucky shoots over each of Steve’s shoulders until they break, until they part and fall back into sync on their feet, Steve boomeranging that damned shield to down at least a half-dozen cyborgs while he delivers a series of roundhouses with an acrobatic flare that makes Bucky’s mouth just a little dry, because, damn.

That suit was never about _function_ , goddamnit, and nobody will ever convince Bucky otherwise.

“You can’t just throw _yourself_ into harm’s way, Buck,” Steve’s carrying on, and Bucky rolls his eyes, because this is an argument Steve’s never gonna win, and the lines of the enemy are looking pretty fucking endless—they should both be saving their breaths.

“S’the only thing I know, Stevie,” Bucky shrugs, but then his eyes catch new guard charging too fucking fast, with too many guns aimed straight at them.

“Down!”

Steve listens, shockingly, for _once_ , and Bucky throws a grenade in the direction of the approaching line; he gets a few, but it’s more a matter of bracing, of widening his visual field and breathing through the fractions of moments, slowing his heartbeat deliberately in order to see what needs seeing, to save what can’t get lost.

And Steve reads it in him, when he gets ready to face the onslaught while Steve himself is taking out drones at their sides; Steve opens his mouth to stop it, to scream at him to find another way, but Bucky’s already focused, already beyond regrouping.

This is what he was made for, after all.

And he can feel it, the shift in the air that surrounds them when Steve sees it, when Steve _gets_ it: when Steve stops gasping terror and starts breathing wonder.

Because Bucky’s not just deflecting the bullets helter-skelter; Bucky’s deflecting them back to the fuckers who shot ‘em, and he’s taking them out without a single discharge of his own firearm.

Which is a pity, because at no point in his very long life has he been a better shot. 

But Bucky smirks, when Steve realizes that the defense is more an offense, that the display is intricately timed, labyrinthine in its poise, in the deftness of the way Bucky moves: he smirks, and by the time he’s done, the fifty-some-strong swarm of droids are no better than spare parts.

They’ve got space for a breather, if only just, and Bucky turns to Steve with what’s grown into a full-on grin to meet the hanging jaw, the shock and awe burning hot inside that gaze.

“I always had a keen eye, Rogers,” Bucky tilts his head. “And a sniper’s precision. Don’t tell me the serum didn’t amp up your naturally-occurring gifts, too.” 

And he lets himself revel in some well-earned arrogance, lets a touch of cocky pride color his body language not just because it’s warranted, but because it does gorgeous things to the size of Steve’s pupils.

 _Really_ gorgeous things, Bucky thinks, as Steve just stares at him for a good long stretch of seconds before he quirks a brow. 

“Fine,” Bucky says, rolling his eyes. “Some of it’s automatic.” Because yeah, some of it is. The arm’s not just for show, the tech is more advanced than even Bucky fully comprehends—than even his handlers ever seemed to know the full extent of; it’s an impressive piece of technology, and it’s never _just_ ripped things apart—it was thinking when Bucky couldn’t, and Bucky hates that, when he dwells on it too hard: insult to injury, salt in gaping wounds that this despicable jumble of circuits and wires was afforded more of a will, was considered more _worthy_ of that than he was. 

It’s hard, when he thinks about it. So he doesn’t think about it.

“Trajectory mapping, impact analysis,” Bucky shrugs, and tries to remember that it’s just tech, it’s like Tony and his suits: it cannot think, it cannot know, it cannot care. It is static, it was used as much as he was, and that’s the part to hate, not the arm: he hates that _he_ was made into a thing.

But it’s hard, sometimes, to hate an idea. It’s hard to hate an idea when there’s something tangible hung on his shoulder that he can hate instead.

And yet: Steve’s here, breathing heavy, staring at the metal like it’s something to behold. Steve’s here, Steve’s _breathing_ , because Bucky’s arm could take the hits meant for Steve’s flesh, for Steve’s bones.

“Might be an eyesore, but it’s a smart motherfucker,” Bucky finally shrugs. “They wanted an assassin, but sometimes, they needed an army.” 

Bucky hears the approach, the crunch of footsteps, mechanized, inhuman—their time’s up.

“So put all that alongside my enviable skillset,” Bucky forces himself to smirk, to wink, to lighten the mood and feel the familiar weight of the weapons he holds against the weapon he _is_ as he checks the mag, hefts the gun. “All those predictive equations mixed up with a bit of intuition, ‘n more than a little experience, and if I was pretty decent at watching your six before, then now?” 

Bucky’s cocks his head, exhales slow, and lets the pulse in his chest count the marks, plan the shots; lets the arm on his left prep for cover:

“Now, I’m fucking _fantastic_.”

~~~~~~

By the time the crisis is sufficiently averted, Bucky takes a grand total of seven bullets to the flesh of him, none of which hit where it matters; more than half of them are all but healed by the time he hits the medics. The dressings they place on the rest of them are really just for show, if everyone’s honest, but Bucky doesn’t care too much, just now, because he’s with the medics, and Steve.

Steve’s not. Steve isn’t with the medics, and Steve doesn’t have to be; Steve can be out doing damage control, can suffer debriefing—Steve doesn’t have to be here, because Steve didn’t get shot. 

Not once.

Bucky grins to himself, his own private victory in the only battle he’s ever lived to fight, and he doesn’t even mind the poking and the prodding, doesn’t care that his left arm looks like it went through a meat grinder—scraped on the asphalt and dented to hell, torn through in a few places where the ricochet went funky, and damn, but if he’s gonna be anywhere for treatment, it should probably be Tony’s lab.

Still: weapons are replaceable. Bones mend, skin heals. Steve’s alive and kicking. Bucky leans back, lets his eyes drift closed because fuck, man.

Ain’t nothing better than that.

So he’s drifting, just kind of basking in the win, and he doesn’t register the absence of the med staff, or the presence in front of him, until he feels warmth, feels solid heat pressed soft against his bent knees; feels pressure, something like promise in a way he can’t actually know, except that he _knows_ it, climbing the length of his left arm, up the wrist toward the elbow.

Bucky blinks, and takes in Steve’s kneeling form, settled right between his legs, and as soon as he sees that Bucky’s watching him, that Bucky’s eyes are open and he’s looking, Steve glances up to meet the gaze and holds, digs his palms into Bucky’s thighs for balance and tilts his head where it’s hovering above torn metal, patient, expectant.

Grateful, but Bucky can’t figure why.

“Steve,” Bucky says, and it comes out with a shake that’s not supposed to be there, that Bucky doesn’t mean to let out. “What’re ya doin’?”

And that’s when Steve tips his chin, eyes never leaving Bucky, not so much as to blink; that’s when Bucky realizes what the feeling on his arm was before he’d thought to look: Steve’s pressing lips, featherlight and deliberate and reverent, almost, and fuck, _fuck_ but Bucky shivers, shudders through the whole of his frame when Steve lifts, presses his mouth to the alloy again, and then breathes out, answers soft:

“I’m kissin’ it better,” he murmurs, and Bucky can see the fog of the exhale in his peripheral vision where it glazes the metallic sheen; Bucky can feel Steve’s lips like a brand and a balm and he thinks that his heart might give out, here and now, for the way that it’s filling, the way that it’s pounding, for the way that it’s not big enough to hold the unnameable thing that starts to grow there, to take root because Steve’s staring at him, staring _in_ him, and he’s kissing the arm like it’s worth a damn.

He’s looking at _Bucky_ like he’s worth the _world_. 

“Stevie,” Bucky swallows; “someone’s gonna see.”

“Don’t care,” Steve shakes his head, nuzzles at the smoothest part left of the plating, kisses the edge of an exposed service port, breath teasing wires that peek through the scrapes. “I don’t fucking care, Buck,” Steve says, and it’s crackly, it’s soft and small and true, and Bucky’s right hand moves to fit against the back of Steve’s head, moves to bring Steve in close to the center of his chest and Steve goes willingly, presses in and makes a home where he doesn’t need to, because that’s all Bucky’s ever been, ever wanted.

Steve. Here. Home.

With him. 

“Can’t keep doin’ that, Buck,” Steve’s breathing against Bucky’s bare skin, still uncovered for the sake of his wounds, and Steve doesn’t care, hasn’t ever cared that Bucky’s got the same recovery time as Steve himself, doesn’t recognize that a hit for him isn’t a hit at all, not really, not unless it’s in the right place; to Steve all the already-fading marks on his body are hateful, are holes in the heart of him, and Steve’s voice is thick when he presses lips against the shadow of a bullet-graze, barely even there:

“You can’t put yourself on the line like that,” Steve rasps, speaks against the hint of the wound where it was. “Not for me.”

And Bucky shakes his head, because Steve Rogers is a fucking moron; Steve Rogers’ vision is better than 20/20, now, and still he can’t see a goddamn thing that counts.

Bucky breathes in deep, lets Steve bury himself in the heave of his chest, and hide the hard swallow, the screwing up of those eyes as they burn—Bucky gives Steve the rush of his exhale to give in to the way that he falters, the way that he feels too fucking much.

“Ain’t no me without you, punk. Simple as that,” Bucky presses a kiss to the top of Steve’s head, and rests his chin there, and keeps breathing with Steve there, held close to the heart. “Always has been.”

“That road runs both ways,” Steve forces out, rough through the tightness of his throat, and maybe it’s to ease that pressure, maybe it’s to curb some need, but Steve moves his lips to kiss the skin of Bucky’s chest, to hold there longer than any reason, save to want: Steve waits, and holds, and moves lips to form words against the muscle there, never pulling back.

“I can’t,” he starts, and his lashes drag against Bucky’s skin as he shakes his head; regroups. “You,” and Steve’s breath catches, and Bucky’s palm shifts, cups Steve’s cheek and lets him lean into it, invites him to take whatever comfort can be known. 

“You can’t leave me,” Steve finally tears out from deep down, jagged from the soul of him, and he’s twining his fingers through Bucky’s left hand and lifting it to his own chest, holding it close, keeping it safe, and Bucky counts the beats of the heart underneath as he gathers his thoughts, and he wades through the ocean of _fuck, but this, but him, he’s everything_—

 _Always_.

“Don’t got any plans to, Stevie,” Bucky finally grates out, and he lifts the hands Steve’s got folded into his left up to his lips, and kisses the knuckles slow, telling Steve with every press of his mouth, meeting Steve’s eyes and looking nowhere else as he says, low and despairing and needing and whole: “Ain’t _never_ had any plans to do that.”

Steve shudders hard against Bucky at that, and they both let the moments slide until they’re steady again; until Steve’s palm is loose and flat against Bucky’s ribs; until the metal of Bucky’s left hand is searing for the grasp of Steve’s fingers, the touch of his skin.

Bucky brings Steve’s hand to his lips one more time, and presses an open mouth to the hard groove of the lifeline in the middle.

“Let’s go home,” he breathes there, and it’s right.

It’s so _right_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next chapter: supersized muscles get supersized kinks, you know ;)


	3. Kinks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Bad hand-related puns, back massages, and oh, hey, then: _lower_.

“You’re about a subtle as a brick, y’know.”

Steve tries to fool him, naive bemusement in those baby blues, but Bucky ain’t having none of it.

“What is it?” Bucky sighs, raising his eyebrow half in askance, half with a demand: Steve’s not right, Steve’s movements are stiff when he stands—Steve’s in pain.

“S’nothin’.”

Bucky snorts, but there’s no humor. S’just fuckin’ typical with this idiot, is what it is.

“Don’t you try that shit on me, Rogers. You know better.”

The tone of the words comes out hard: Bucky means for it to, he wants Steve to think twice, to break the habit of hiding what it means when he hurts, of trying to deflect when all Bucky’s ever wanted was to know what was wrong so he could try and fix it, and if there was no fixing it, then god _damn_ , he was sure as hell gonna share half the weight. 

“No, I mean,” Steve stumbles a bit on the words, and Bucky knows him too well not to see the tension in his features as he reaches for the hem of his shirt and lifts, puts his bare torso on display for god and Bucky and the whole of Manhattan outside their floor-to-ceiling windows to see—if the whole of Manhattan ever thought to look up.

“All healed, see?” Steve shows off golden skin, unblemished—unmarred by the proof of pain. “I’m fine.”

Bucky can’t stop the roll of his eyes and still swallow the way some strangled sort of sob wants to choke him, but this is Steve. This is Steve, and he’s always denied himself—he’s always turned a blind eye to his own humanity and Bucky never could stand it; can stand it even less in the now.

He can’t do both, though, so the eye-roll’s what slips through.

“You’re not _fine_ ,” Bucky just barely keeps from hissing it, bites it out hard instead. “You look like you’re swallowin’ a fucking lemon, look at you.”

And he does, too: his face’s twisted up so bad, all the more for trying to hide it when he moves, when his shoulders shift, that when he tries to throw a smirk Bucky’s way it barely even passes for a grimace, let alone a lecherous grin as Steve lowers his voice and rumbles deep:

“S’that you volunteering to give me something sweeter to swallow?”

And god knows Bucky’d do it in a heartbeat if he thought it’d help, but it won’t, because Steve’s never half-assed a single thing in his whole goddamn life, and sucking cock ain’t no exception: the man arcs his neck back and moves against the length like it’s gold on his tongue, and if he’s in pain from just standing, and breathing, and turning wrong, then hell.

“Misdirection,” Bucky tsks, walking over to stand at Steve’s side as he deadpans: “What a shocker.”

“M’just sore, Buck,” Steve protests, but it’s a thing that goes from sixty to zero in the space of a breath when Bucky’s hands reach out to rest on Steve’s shoulders, to force a long, half-strained sigh from those lips as Bucky guides Steve toward the bedroom.

“They got pills for this kinda thing, you know,” Bucky murmurs as he moves them forward, slowly; as his thumbs find soft divots along either side of Steve’s spine.

“They’re out of my system before they do much good,” Steve concedes, rueful. “Fucking metabolism. You’d know that,” Steve starts to lay into Bucky in kind; turns his head, and the sharp intake of breath is the only indication that it causes him pain, sure, but that’s too damn much for Bucky, so Bucky leans around to meet his eyes, too keep him still and as comfortable as it’s possible to hold.

“You’d know that if you ever let ‘em give _you_ anything to help with the pain as you’re stitching back together,” Steve finishes, but the steam’s lost partway through: his eyes are tired, sore like his bones, but it’s the fondness that takes the sting from the reprimand, hypocritical as it is; it’s the way Steve resigns himself to Bucky’s attention, Bucky’s concern, and almost, _almost_ looks like he thinks it’s a boon.

“Went over to PT,” Steve says as they move awkwardly down the hallway, Bucky’s hands still drawing idle shapes around the lines of his skeleton layered deep beneath the skin: not sticking out anymore, but holding together something infinitely precious with the kind of strength, the kind of certainty that had always been deserved.

“Visited Cal?” Bucky smiles, leans to kiss the crook of Steve’s neck. “Fucking _love_ Cal.”

He does, too—she works _magic_ on his left shoulder on a regular goddamned basis. Bucky could _kiss_ that woman.

“She did her best,” Steve sighs. “Couple hours’ worth, I think she only stopped because her hands went numb,” and he flushes; Bucky can feel it underneath his lips where Steve’s skin warms, where his pulse rises quick. “She said to come back tomorrow, and she’d keep working on me, but—”

“Those super-muscles get super kinks,” Bucky breathes, “I get it.” He nuzzles at the column of Steve’s throat before clasping arms around Steve’s waist from behind and pulling him flush to Bucky’s chest—careful, but so very close.

“On the bed,” Bucky exhales against the line of Steve’s jaw, patting Steve’s ass indicatively as he lets go, pulls back: “shirt off, face down.”

“ _Jesus_ ,” and Bucky can hear the smirk in Steve’s voice as he needles, stripping from the top, and doing one better by sloughing off his jeans: “speaking of _kinks_.”

“ _More_ attempts to distract me from the concern at hand,” Bucky shakes his head, and crowds Steve slowly onto the sheets, letting Steve spread out as best he can before straddling Steve’s hips, careful to leave the bulk of his own weight situated on his knees at either side. “How many decades is it gonna take you to figure out that where you can pull that wool over everyone else’s eyes, it ain’t _ever_ gonna work on me?” 

And Bucky’s been watching, been paying real close attention to where and how Steve’s aching, Steve’s hurting: he’s been calculating where to apply pressure, where to start kneading that flesh first, and he’s got it, just along the lines of the shoulder blades, but one at a time, because Bucky knows exactly how he’s going to make Steve better, Bucky’s got an ace up his sleeve that Cal, skilled as she is, can’t match.

“Oh, _fuck_ ,” Steve moans, vibrating and echoing and full, as Bucky takes the edge of his left hand, flattened and flipped on its side, and pushes slow, rolls from the heel of the palm to the ends of the fingers, the cool of the metal along the furnace of Steve’s body as he maps, charts the tight places, the spaces where the trigger points are palpable and need tending, need loving, need release.

Bucky frowns, because Steve’s tense against his touch, and that’s the opposite of what he’s trying to achieve, here. “Hurt, or—”

“Good hurt,” and Steve’s half-pushing, half-shying from the way that Bucky’s working the muscle, the way he’s leaning down at the forearm and exerting pressure in a long, hard line. “Jesus, yes,” Steve gasps as Bucky’s thumb grasps and his palms knead. “Good hurt.” 

So Bucky keeps at it: mindful, patient, like a mantra with his hands, a prayer with his touch, walking the labyrinth of fascia with printless fingers edging deeper, deeper and lapping up the sounds Steve makes like water on the far side of hell, the metal like a scar on Steve’s hot skin, except Steve’s breathing deep, Steve’s leaning ever so slightly into the touch, and the silver’s beautiful against the gold, somehow; beautiful _because_ of the gold.

It shouldn’t be. _But_.

“Any better?” Bucky finally murmurs at the lobe of Steve’s ear once Steve’s gone supple beneath him, from the shoulders to the splay, the give of his chest all heavy and warm into the plush of the mattress below.

“Yeah,” Steve breathes, and the sounds muffled in the duvet but it’s so fucking satisfied that Bucky can’t help but smile, and press that smile to the side of Steve’s head to keep it from expanding too far, too vast: “Yeah, s’fucking better.”

“Super kinks in super muscles,” Bucky mouths cheekily at Steve’s hairline; “They need a super _man_ us.”

And Steve snorts, and Bucky feels the joy, the humor, the amusement at the horrible pun and all that underlays it, all that lies between _them_ : Bucky feels it like a fucking blaze in the spots between his ribs.

“Anywhere else?” he asks it, so as not to burn too fast.

“Lower back?” Steve ventures, but it’s not like he has to ask—whatever he needs, Bucky’s on it. He moves both hands, now, down the crust of Steve’s backbone. 

“Like, no,” Steve wriggles, tries to urge Bucky’s hands where he wants with just the subtle roll of his newly-loosened shoulders. “Down,” Bucky flattens palms and slides them lower. “Down,” slower, slower so he can feel the rise of Steve’s lungs, so he can feel just the hint of his heartbeat through all that flesh and blood. “Side,” Bucky moves to the right, instinctively. “No, I mean, other side,” and Bucky shakes his head, stifles a snort, because yeah, of _course_ he was supposed to know that. “Little more,” and Bucky complies; “Okay back,” Bucky rolls his eyes, unseen; bends to nip the base of Steve’ neck, fully-felt, and his hands—

“ _There_ , shit,” Steve sighs, and it’s a wanton, perfect sound, and Bucky’s knees are getting tired, they don’t want to hold him up so high, they don’t want to leave his hips so far from the waiting curve of Steve’s ass. “Right there.”

“Mmm,” Bucky hums, and forces himself to work the knot beneath his hand, feeling the tension easing. “Let me just,” and Bucky shifts; “Let me just readjust here.” 

Because Bucky has an idea, a gorgeous idea, and hell—heat’ll help the tension, too, so it’s not even just foreplay, not even just the first movement of the symphony. 

“Lemme get the angle right,” and Bucky rolls his hips as he slides down Steve’s body—and if Steve shivers for the way Bucky’s cock lines into the cleft of his ass, Bucky feels it like a spark through his veins; if Bucky feels it when the catch of flesh against the cotton of his briefs shakes through Steve’s frame, it’s not by accident.

Not even slightly.

But Bucky’s not done; that’s not what Bucky’s after, just now.

“Lemme get the angle right, get in position,” and his left hand's still poised, still massaging slow and deep into the tissue that aches in Steve’s lower back, but the rest of him is slipping lower, lower, until Bucky’s curled up, knees bent wide around Steve’s thighs.

“Buck, what…”

His right hand cups the swell of Steve’s ass before he parts the cheeks, before he laps down the nearly-bared flesh, drags his tongue as Steve stills.

“Oh,” Steve barely breathes it, and goes boneless, and Bucky’s tapping intent and relief against the dwindling knotted mess in Steve’s back; Bucky’s spreading him wider with a single splay of thumb to ring finger—pressing the purse of his lips to the tight pucker of flesh that he finds.

Steve damn well _whimpers_.

“Look at that,” Bucky sighs, and it sounds like the smile it drops from, that curls his lips. “Best muscle relaxer in the world.”

And Steve’s breath goes ragged when Bucky’s tongue swirls around that rough ring; Steve chokes on air itself when Bucky dips inside the hole.

“Breathe,” Bucky speaks against the tender flesh. “Deep breaths, slow,” and Bucky’s voice is quiet, Bucky’s hand on Steve’s back is constant: “So slow,” and Bucky’s flesh palms at the very top of his thigh, and Steve trembles, and Bucky feels light.

“See, this is why Cal couldn’t get you unwound properly,” Bucky murmurs. “I’m the only one who knows how to take you apart,” and he widens his fingers, splits Steve’s crack just that little bit wider: “Just,” and Bucky exhales a long stream of cool air against Steve’s hole as he breathes out: “ _so_.”

“Jesus _Christ_ , Buck,” Steve gasps, and Bucky chuckles, licks painstakingly and hatefully slow up the crevice to the base of Steve’s spine before he lets his mouth, lets his right hand stroke, work at Steve’s skin, lets them join his left hand until there’s nothing but smooth definition, the hardest parts buried in the bone.

It takes them both a moment, many moments: it takes them both some time before they’re lined against one another, propped on their sides and staring eye to eye, Bucky’s arm wrapped firm to rest against Steve’s waist.

“It’s got its uses,” Bucky breathes out, rueful, as he clenches the left hand in question to squeeze at Steve’s hip.

“Fuck, yes, it does,” Steve lets the words dangle on a sigh, and it’s beautiful, but then he leans in.

“But so does _this_.”

And he’s sucks Bucky’s tongue between his lips, and damn.

Bucky’s never been so thrilled to be such a useful sonuvabitch.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: Bucky Barnes and his Left Arm—the new frontier of field medicine. Or something.


	4. Heat

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Just a quick near-death experience to spice things up.

Bucky’s seen this; he’s seen this before: all the red, all the blood, all the pale skin and the slack features and the horror, the _horror_ that keeps him from reaching out and checking for a pulse; that keeps him from staring at the chest beneath the uniform that’s crimson, now—no other colors, no distinction, just red, just the promise of death in whatever time they find themselves, whatever world they meet.

Bucky’s seen this, in his nightmares, so he should know what to do; except the nightmares come when he’s naked between sheets, between warmth, and there’s no warmth here—the skin’s cool, ever cooling.

The nightmares come to him, and Steve’s breath on his neck, Steve’s lips: they wake him every time. They save him from the end.

He doesn’t recognize this scene. He doesn’t know how this ends.

And that is _terrifying_.

Bucky breathes, and grits his teeth, and _makes_ himself press his left hand to Steve’s carotid, for accuracy; lets his head rest against Steve’s chest for comfort as he listens, listens: there.

Barely, but there.

Bucky breathes. He doesn’t know how this ends, and it is terrifying.

But that means the ending is in his hands, and that; _that_.

Saving Steve Rogers, at any and all costs: _that_ is a thing that he knows.

He straightens, takes stock of the damage, quick and efficient and as detached from the racing, from the sinking in his chest as he can be because Steve’s blood is sticky on his cheek, his torso is a mess of bullet wounds but they’re already halfway healed, he’s mostly pushed the metal out and they’ve tried to close, but that’s not what’s worrying.

What’s worrying, what’s lead in Bucky’s gut, is the way that Steve’s blood is damn-near pooling on the ground from his leg, the flow of it from the wounds still coming but it’s slower, ever-slower, and Bucky knows the artery is compromised, can see the lagging pulse in the red, weak like it used to be, like it _can’t_ be—

His fingers on the left aren’t particularly delicate; aren’t inherently well-suited to seeking out where the artery has come apart amidst torn flesh—his fingers aren’t small, but they’re deft, they’re precise and just like the rest of him, they know the rhythm of Steve’s heartbeat by instinct, by rote and so they find it: they find the bleed, too persistent for Steve’s healing to keep a leg-up, and Bucky lets training take over, whether he remembers exactly how he got it or not; he lets the fingers clamp, feels it keenly as the sensors in the fingertips heat so as to cauterize where they need to, and then pressure, inhuman pressure to staunch the rest, to push that blood back where it belongs and please, oh, god, _please_ —

Bucky nearly comes apart when Steve’s chest lifts—force to it, now, real motion, real breath; Bucky nearly sobs when he glances down, doesn’t chance lifting his hand, removing the pressure but he knows, he can _feel_ that the bleeding’s stopped; when he looks up, and Steve’s eyes are fluttering, meeting his: hazy, but there. Blue in all the red. Life in all the death.

“Stevie,” Bucky rasps out, takes his right hand and cups Steve’s face like he’s precious, because he is, my god, he _is_. “Stevie, Steve, c’mon, I need you to keep your eyes open, okay? Focus on me, okay, latch onto my voice, just,” and Bucky’s babbling, Bucky’s left hand can’t help but feel the force of Steve’s pulse and he needs it to calm, needs it not to jar any tender, fragile-healing part of Steve back open, liable to get lost.

“Breathe,” Bucky’s pleading with him, thumb stroking too fast against Steve’s cheek to hide how goddamned _scared_ he still is. “Breathe, right? Yeah? Just breathe, nothing to it, just breathe for me.”

“Buck,” Steve finally gasps, and his voice is so rough, so small, and his eyes are so lost and Bucky just wants to hold him, just wants to clear that gaze and help it know that it’s safe, they’re _safe_ now; or else, they will be, because Bucky won’t allow for anything less. 

“Bucky,” and Steve’s jaw drops, and his eyes water. “Oh god, oh god, no, they got you, you’re here too, what—”

And it’s then that Bucky recognizes the look, the sheen to that gaze and the fear in that heartbeat and oh, fuck, but Bucky’d watched him wake to the world after the breaking of the kind of fever that brought the priest to their door, after the bruising on those ribs and the tripping in that blood and fuck, but Steve doesn’t know where they are, not yet; Steve doesn’t know they’re both still breathing. Steve never thought he’d wake to the living again, when last he closed his eyes. 

“We’re alive,” Bucky cuts him off, as quick as he can, because he remembers this: he remembers pressing Steve’s hand to his chest, and then guiding it back to Steve’s own, and waiting until proof of life set into those soft palms, that stubborn head. 

“We’re alive, punk, c’mon,” Bucky soothes now, as best he can, hands on Steve’s wounds and Steve’s face and he bends to put lips at the corner Steve’s mouth as he breathes: “Shhh, c’mon.”

And Bucky’s tracing the pulse just below Steve’s ear as he watches the eyes on him start to clear, start to focus and take in what’s there, what’s here, what’s _them_ , and Bucky wants to fall apart, more than a little, as he watches Steve’s surprise, Steve’s shock, Steve’s disbelief as it washes unfiltered over slack features: Steve really hadn’t thought he’d wake up.

Goddamned _idiot_.

“How,” Steve starts, eyes wide, trailing down Bucky’s body and finding his hand on the mess of Steve’s leg, and he reaches, he reaches to touch—

“Careful!” Bucky catches his inquiring fingertips before they can make contact with the metal, wrapping them in his right hand and bringing them to his lips. 

“Careful,” he murmurs against the whorls of those fingerprints, of the man who is everything, and the spirals that spell him out; “they’re still kinda hot.”

And it’s wonder, pure and simple: it’s _awe_ that colors Steve’s expression as he understands, as he puts together the injury that he’d surrendered to, and the way it’s already starting to stitch together, slow—he sees what was done, and how, and Bucky almost apologizes without thinking, on instinct: for the damage, the burning, the harm, however necessary, because the arm is a _weapon_ —

“Fuckin’ miracle worker,” Steve breathes out, reverent and bright, and he’s looking at the arm, at the hand like it’s unfathomable, and Bucky gets that—a killer that saves, it doesn’t make sense, and it’s unfathomable to Bucky too, sometimes, like this; except that’s not it.

That’s not it, because Steve’s staring with a kind of breathless, depthless gratitude, a kind of marveling that’s not about the way that arm defies its place, its purpose: it’s about the way that arm defies all reason, and there’s affection there that catches in Bucky’s throat as Steve looks at it, at him; at it.

At _him_.

“Don’t give it too much credit,” Bucky glances ruefully down at the metal—still warm, yeah, but nothing compared to the flush in Bucky’s cheeks.

“Ain’t giving it any credit,” Steve counters, struggles to lean in, the grimace on his face catching tight in Bucky’s throat so he bends, gets close enough for Steve to touch his nose to Bucky’s cheek, to breathe him in as he states clear and true and honest:

“Giving _you_ all the credit.”

And Bucky doesn’t have the heart in him, just now, to mourn what was almost lost; he doesn’t have the strength to tear Steve a new one about self-preservation and the fact that Bucky’s _soul_ won’t stand to give him up, not to anything: Bucky can’t, not here, not like this.

So he leans in, and fits his mouth to Steve’s, and kisses that fucker for all he’s worth; for everything.

And, all things considered, that seems to do just fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Next time: if you've been sticking around for the fisting? You're in luck ;)


	5. Fist

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Fisting. And feelings. ~~You thought you were getting out of the feelings because fisting was happening, didn't you? Hahaha, no.~~
> 
> And I figured I'd post this before the 25th, for those of you who celebrate the holiday, just in case any of you need a distraction from gatherings or other related events that are more of an obligation than a joy. Happy Holidays/End of December; hopefully some schmoopy sex makes for a good gift <3
> 
> Andand: only one more chapter after this! Crazy. Also: how the hell did this get so long? Fucking fuck, I cannot even.

“Holy, fucking, shit, goddamn, I _can’t_ —”

Music, s’what that is. That’s _Only Forever_ and _Moonlight Cocktail_ and _When My Baby Smiles At Me_ , that’s heat in Bucky’s chest and in his gut and up his spine because when Steve Rogers comes undone and starts using that filthy mouth of his, Bucky knows he’s doin’ something right.

“Fuck me, c’mon,” Steve’s panting, moaning—demanding, somehow, even as he begs with Bucky’s first finger— _’the left hand, Buck,’_ Steve’d damn near whined, _’you promised_’—buried full to the last knuckle and teasing slow at his prostate, watching Steve’s pupils dilate until it’s all night and no sky between them: until Steve’s red with wanting from his cheeks to his cock and the moans—Christ _almighty_ , but the sounds he’s making are doing funny things to the pounding of Bucky’s blood, making him dizzy, burning him up from the cells, up and out.

“More, deeper, Buck, c’mon,” Steve’s gasping, pushing himself back onto Bucky’s fingertip, working his hips to press Bucky farther, to bring him in closer. “ _Fuck_ me you jerk, faster, I wanna feel it, wanna feel those fingers, I wanna feel you, c’ _mon_.”

“Pushy lil’ bastard, aintcha?” Bucky hisses against the nape of Steve’s neck as his wrist turns, as he pulls back to a whimper, just to slide in a second digit, quicker than he ought to, but Steve’s damn well keening around the width, the increase of pressure, of force, of tactile worship as Bucky works, undulates his fingers to the pace of Steve’s heartbeat through the flesh, Steve’s breaths shaking frantic, frenzied: full.

“ _Little_?” Steve chokes out, indignant, and Bucky just laughs, just presses his own open, gasping mouth to the sweat-shined expanse of Steve’s shoulder blade as he whispers:

“Always be my lil’ Stevie,” and he takes a moment, a long moment where his fingers thrust and his pulse hits hard and he breathes Steve in and thinks: for all that changes, there is _this_. 

“Always.”

The tightness of Steve’s body, the heat of it: those are things he can feel acutely—roughness, slickness as he works Steve open, as he curls fingers against the swell of his gland; Bucky feels that against his touch; the curve of Steve’s mouth, though—Steve craning his neck and turning as best he can, sinking low around Bucky’s slow-circling fingers thrust inside him as he asks without words, as he beckons with the part of his lips: _that_ , Bucky feels in his chest, in the pulsing of his heart.

He leans, and kisses the word, the affirmation right out of Steve’s mouth:

“ _Always_.”

And good _god_ , but it tastes sweet.

“But right _now_ ,” Steve’s lips move against Bucky’s, all slippery smooth and pinching with the consonants, grabbing and holding and dragging and keeping and yes, yes, _yes_ ; “Right now your ‘lil’ Stevie’ wants you to fucking _move_.”

And Bucky can’t help but snort, can’t help but laugh from the stomach, through the chest, can’t help but shape his joy-shaped lips to Steve’s neck as he rubs knuckles against the inner walls of Steve’s body, against one another as he stretches each digit, separates them to push slow at Steve’s boundaries, to coax Steve to give and fuck but he does, he does: looser and louder and Bucky lets the heat there match the metal to its burn, lets the pulse all around his touch speak God’s name to the heart of him, lets the clench and release of Steve’s muscles tease at the sensors and send shivers up Bucky’s spine in a way that has no words, that is wired straight to his nervous system and sends lightning out fierce behind his eyes, trips in the rhythm of his blood as it realigns to Steve, to Steve, to _Steve_ —

“Another.”

Bucky’s throat is tight, heart all caught up, drumming fast in through too small a space.

“Another?”

He tests the give, the slick at Steve’s hole and thinks it’s enough, thinks he can slip in the ring finger he can’t wear a vow on and promise something real with his touch if he wants to, if Steve wants it, but Bucky’s not sure: he’s careful, he so careful of the joints in the alloy, the places where the motions won’t graze smooth, and what if he falters, what if he forgets for just a _second_ —

“All of it,” Steve confirms, breathy and on the edge of oblivion, on the brink of something taking him and unraveling him from the head straight through the soul. “All of _you_.”

And Jesus _Christ_ , when Steve talks like that, when his voice is high on a keen, on a moan and it wants for him, aches for him: when it calls out for Bucky as much as the fucking feather-light flutter, the goddamned undulation of Steve against the fingers already buried deep: and Bucky’s breath catches, Bucky’s heart damn near _stops_ and his wrist is turning, he’s stroking the slickness of Steve like it’s impossible, like he’s a marvel and Bucky needs to make him safe and it’s slow, and damn right, it’s reverent, because Bucky still doesn’t know what he did to have this, to know this, to be able to touch Steve from the inside and to watch, to taste the way it undoes him, the way it makes him come alive in the part of his lips, the long stretch of his neck, the push of fevered blood against the column of his skin: he doesn’t _know_ , but it feels like bliss and prayers gone answered and Bucky will worship it rightly, Bucky’ll be goddamn grateful for every mouthful of Steve’s sweetness, every heartbeat he feels against his fingers, buried deep.

“Steve—”

“ _All_ of you, Buck,” and Steve’s begging for it, and Bucky’s helpless, Bucky’s clay for Steve to mold in his hands when he murmurs, when he turns, arches hard and speaks it low against the curve of Bucky’s jaw: “ _Please_.”

And Bucky trembles, and his heart _hurts_ because this man is _everything_ , and Bucky slips his fingers just a little further, moves them slow in the space he stretches, pushing to find, to make: he taps them so softly, so quickly, so delicate against Steve’s prostate that it feels even to him more like vibration, shakes like a hum up his arm, but for Steve—for Steve, it looks like heaven and hell coming together and disintegrating on contact because Bucky can damn well feel, for all that he can’t quite see except the barest hint of how Steve’s eyes go big, and he can feel the rapid halt-trip of Steve’s heartbeat against his touch, against the shell of his ear through rasping, heaving lungs where Bucky lets his forehead rest against the line of Steve’s spine, where he rolls his chin to press tight against Steve’s skin, to remind him this is real, to prove that they’re here and there’s nothing between them anymore, they’re exactly as they always should have been and Bucky can’t risk anything taking that away, Bucky can’t risk losing even a modicum of the intimacy, the sheer and unwavering gapless fit of their bodies, of everything they are, all the jagged edges worn smooth in just the right places so they slide in perfect, so they breathe in the same goddamn time and Bucky can't risk this, Bucky can’t take a gamble that might cause pain, cause hurt, that might drive a wedge or even a sigh between what is everything, between this, between _them_.

“I don’t want—” Bucky chokes around the words, around the tightness in his chest and the clenching of Steve’s muscles, the roll of his hips to push Bucky’s fingers just a little bit further, to drag Bucky closer and tease the curve of his skin against Bucky’s cock where it presses, half-hard against his groin.

“Ain’t nothing you can do that I don’t want from you,” Steve murmurs, low and sensuous and Bucky feels it like the flow of life inside his veins, thick and strong and fucking _necessary_. “Ain’t nothing that can hurt that won’t heal. So yeah,” Steve dips those hips again, and tightens around Bucky’s fingers again, lets them drags just a little and he breathes out and loosens: “Another.”

And Bucky’s dick can’t help but twitch when Steve lifts up into Bucky, arches from the spine and down to the pelvis as he takes initiative and angles Bucky close, close as he can on his own toward his prostate as he keens to be touched, as he demands another, yes—

“And then the rest.”

And Bucky’s heartbeat is an earthquake bent to tear apart his veins, set to rip from the arteries and leave him shattered, leave him empty for the way everything he’s got rises to the surface, for the way he floats with the idea that’s all wanton lust and terror, because what if he breaks Steve, what if Steve is hurt, what if he loses himself too much inside this, inside the man he loves and the way they fit and the way Steve’s heart is _his_ , goddamnit, beucase Steve’s wants all of him, Steve wants this _thing_ inside him, wants it because it is Bucky’s, because it is _Bucky_ and he believes that Bucky is good, and he holds as true that Bucky is safe as Bucky would never risk his Stevie, he wouldn’t, not ever, and he’s scared of this, scared of what could go wrong but Steve is panting, Steve is damn well grinding back on Bucky’s metal digits where three are buried deep, Steve is pressing hard against the two that anchor at his entrance like he means to brand them to his flesh, and Steve wants this, Steve’s begging for it with the cadence of his breath and the pitch inside his words and the wardrum of his pulse where Bucky touches, where Bucky breathes and fuck, fuck—

Bucky gropes with his right hand, and lubes the hell out of what’s still free of his left, and he pulls back, and Steve whimpers, Steve quivers and Bucky makes himself smirk to ease the tension, to keep his own motion fluid as he folds four fingers and makes to slide them in.

And god, but Steve’s fucking _greedy_ for it, for the stretch and the touch and the slick stroke of his fingers, warm for the friction now: Steve moans filthy and perfect and beautiful, he’s so damned beautiful and Bucky’s letting his finger slip in as far as they go, Bucky’s rolling the digits against each other and teasing Steve’s walls toward giving just a little more, toward yielding to the width of fingers pressed together, crooked atop one another in different configurations, twisting and turning and dancing around themselves, knuckles bent, then straight against as he turns his wrist and Steve gasps, Steve jerks around him and against him from the inside and out—because Bucky’s got the swell of Steve’s prostate pushing hot against the tip of his index finger and he’s stroking slow along the gland, one finger curled as the next takes the top, stroking down, and again, and again.

And Bucky‘s relishing the flutter of muscle around the metal, the impossible give-and-take of pressure between heartbeats, in the blink of an eye; the way it sends lightning up through the nerves in his shoulder, through his bones and into his blood until it jolts at the heart of him, almost sets him off course, but Steve: Steve’s fucking sobbing with every breath that escapes him, Steve’s clenching, damn near spasming around Bucky’s fingers and he’s close, Bucky knows it, so fucking close.

“Gonna come before I get there, punk?” Bucky leans, breathes against the shell of Steve’s ear, and it takes a couple ragged breaths between the coaxing synchronicity of his fingers in Steve’s ass to get a wrung out snarl in reply:

“ _Fuck_ you.”

“Naw, babe,” Bucky smirks, lets his hand draw back slow until his fingertips are splayed tight against the slick rim of Steve’s hole: “fuck _you_.”

And what’s amazing—what is goddamned fucking _amazing_ , is the choke of Steve’s laughter, and the way he tries like hell not to give into it, not to give Bucky the satisfaction: what’s amazing is the way that gasp of reluctant amusement rushes and shivers and _hums_ through Steve’s body, and Bucky feels it in the pulse of his blood, against the lengths of metallic fingers, against the press of his chest at Steve’s back when he breathes.

“You’re a jerk,” Steve bites out, and his lungs are heaving in a way that used to be dangerous; in a way that stretches Steve’s limits and tells Bucky this is good; this is _right_ : “and your puns are _horrendous_.”

“Ain’t nothin’ new, punk,” Bucky quips back, rotating his wrist to crest along the whole of Steve’s opening, side to side and back, leaving nothing untouched and leaving Stevie shaking hard as he moves, as he inches breath by breath to pull away.

“And besides,” he whispers, close to Steve’s ear again as his fingers slip from Steve and draw the kind of whine that makes Bucky’s cock go tight, makes him bead wet at the tip: “You _liked_ it.”

And Steve’s mouth is moving, Bucky can feel the hinge of Steve’s jaw against where his own lips jut plump and swollen, worried bright red between his own teeth: Bucky can feel the motion, but the words are lost, if there were any—Steve’s beyond words as he pants, as his lungs grasp for purchase and Bucky wants him, fuck.

 _Fuck_ , but Bucky loves him.

 

“Look at you,” Bucky marvels, just a little, as he lets his right hand reach around Steve’s body as his left hand cups a globe of that ass and kneads it, slow and deep.

“Look at this,” Bucky chides, almost breathless, and it’s barely a whisper as he drags a thumb over Steve’s slit, traces circles in the pearly want gathered there as Steve strains, as Steve bites his lip close to bleeding as Bucky teases his cock, murmurs low at Steve’s cheek: “Wasting all _this_.” 

“You ain’t no better,” Steve gasps, and cants half-heartedly, no finesse left in him, to drag the curve of his spine, the dip of his ass against Bucky’s own length, wet at the tip just the same.

“Point,” Bucky concedes, right hand halfway to his lips to clean the mess before he course-corrects, before he takes his cum-slick fingers and gathers more from his own cock, slides the tip of his thumb through both their spunk and coats down to the knuckle before he shifts, squeezes the tender flesh of Steve’s ass hard enough to make him gasp, make his lips part wide so Bucky can reach milky fingers up to Steve’s mouth, can slip one in before Steve’s gasping harder, wider, and sucking for all that he’s worth and goddamn, god _damn_ —

Bucky nearly comes, then and there.

“Fucking hell,” Bucky pants hard at the back of Steve’s neck as he swirls his tongue around Bucky’s fingers one more time, lapping the very last of their mingled taste from the nailbeds, the creases of Bucky’s skin before pulling off to whimper, and somehow still demand:

“I won’t come ‘til you’re all in,” Steve hisses, Steve moans. “I want to feel your hands,” and he reaches, presses Bucky’s right palm to his swollen lips as he aches back into the grasp of Bucky’s left against his ass: “Both hands,” and he leads the right hand down to his crotch: “both sides.“

And Bucky can’t help himself, Bucky can’t stand it a minute longer: he curves his body, wrenches his right hand from Steve’s grip and plants it on Steve’s cheek, leads him to turn until Bucky can capture those lips, that perfect fucking mouth, until Bucky can taste them both on the backs of Steve’s teeth until it gathers too tight in his chest to breathe, to control, and Steve meets him in the middle, Steve always matches him stride for stride, Steve’s lost to this, to them; in just as deep as Bucky is and that’s impossible, that’s his heart in Steve’s hand, and good _God_ —

“You’re unbelievable,” Bucky gasps into Steve’s mouth, strokes his thumb along Steve’s cheekbone and kisses him, fast and hard again as he folds his left hand, as he lets the metal finds its own best configuration, smooth as it can go as he tests Steve’s entrance with the middle digit: circles, presses—stretched fucking wide and waiting, wanting.

“How the hell are you real?” Bucky asks, because he still doesn’t understand it, he never has—not in Brooklyn in the cold, and not here with Steve against him, Steve around him, Steve in him as deep as Bucky reaches, as deep as Bucky runs in kind and fucking _hell_.

If there’s an answer, Bucky’s not sure he’s ready to know it; if there’s an answer, it gets swallowed by the sound Steve makes as Bucky eases his whole hand into Steve’s body, slow and sure and it’s a heady fucking thing as Steve’s breath catches, as he goes still and all Bucky knows is the rhythm of that juggernaut-heart in Steve’s chest like a mallet, like a touchstone, like a mantra in the dark.

And something dies in Bucky’s chest at the goddamned _perfection_ of Steve adjusting to the way that Bucky fills him, to the shape of the hand that Bucky was given and maybe owns, can maybe call his like this, with Steve wrapped around it and his pulse like armageddon against the plates, against the crook of each finger: something dies in Bucky as Steve’s breath leaves his lungs in a rush, but for whatever dies it’s nothing, it is _nothing_ compared to the thing that _lives_ , the thing that grows wings and soars in its place and steals the air and the sense and the shadow stretched between them and presses Bucky’s chest against Steve’s body as he wraps a hand around Steve’s cock—the thing that pounds so much stronger than his heart’s ever tried: hard enough, Bucky thinks, for Steve to feel where he’s lined against him, where he can suss out the thrum of Steve’s own blood beyond the curve of Steve’s spine. 

“Jesus,” Bucky moans against that skin.

“Faster,” Steve gasps when Bucky’s hand goes still around his cock, and he’s close, they’re both so fucking _close_ , and the rhythm of Bucky’s hand into Steve’s warmth and out again is the only steady thing left between them, in this, as Bucky pulls quick on Steve’s cock and can’t help the frantic rut of his own hips to push him just over the edge: as the air gets thin and his lungs burn hot and his chest fucking _hurts_ for the gasping, the clenching, for everything that’s in it and so fucking desperately _alive_ , here and now, he’s not sure how long he can last, he’s not sure of his own goddamn _name_ , but what he knows is the feeling, what he knows is the gravity that pulls, and it’s Steve, this, _everything_.

It’s _Steve_.

They come harder than they’ve got any fucking right to, the pressure of Steve’s body clenching, spasming tight around Bucky’s fingers, tripping the sensors, setting the connected nerves alight, caving in around Bucky’s hand and Bucky’s heart and Bucky’s sense of the world as a whole outside of this punk, this fucking _punk_ ; and the innate inclination to hold Steve through the throes and milk him long for all he’s got until he’s wrung dry, until they’re both shaking and it doesn’t fucking matter, because Bucky draws his hand from Steve’s body as he strokes one last time, slow down Steve’s spent cock to tease the seed-slick skin under his balls, to traces the messy lines of come drawn against those abs, and Steve falls into him: boneless. Weightless. Ecstatic.

And this is theirs, Bucky thinks, as his heart keeps pounding for it: for the knowledge, for the certitude as he draws Steve closer, as he closes his eyes and feels fully every sigh, every skip in that pulse as it settles, every twitch of a muscle, every half-shiver of a swallowed moan, and Bucky knows, _knows_ : this is theirs.

This is _his_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And next time, for the last chapter: the plus-one where there are no feelings at all, none, absolutely not.
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
>   
> ~~It's all feelings, I'm so sorry.~~  
> 


	6. Heart

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> And here, at last: the end of this little fic. My thanks, as ever, to [weepingnaiad](http://archiveofourown.org/users/weepingnaiad) for betaing and encouraging (and making sure my porn-writing skills weren't _too_ rusty) and for _not_ telling me to stop writing arm-porn when I asked her to tell me to stop writing arm-porn and do something else with myself. Because, well: I ended up loving writing this way more than I expected to—which brings me to thanking each and every one of _you_ , for your kind words and enthusiasm: really and truly, _thank you_. I am so thrilled you guys enjoyed this story, or else, these _stories_. I hope you enjoy this last one, too  <3

It starts at the source, at the center: it’s familiar, the way the world comes back, starting with that bitter sting, that unmatched scorching beneath his ribs—the way everything hurts and his pulse stumbles, all newborn and fumbling and running into nightstands again as it gets its legs back—it’s familiar, and it takes long moments before the whole production coordinates again, before his brain matches the clench-give of his heart and they both remember that his lungs need in on the show just as quick, before they think to give the cue and in reality that’s the worst part, it’s always the worst part.

Bucky think it hurts the most, coming back: the breathing.

But it’s not like it’s an optional thing, so he steels himself, because fuck _all_ but he knows that it will _burn_ in the worst possible way, and he knows, he _knows_ now like he never knew then that it’s the worst possible way because there are better ways, there are fucking _fantastic_ ways for his lungs to burn as they’ve always experienced pressed up against Steve’s body, his hands on Steve or Steve’s hand on him or both and yes, there are goddamned amazing ways for his lungs to burn themselves alive but this is fundamentally _not_ one of them.

Except—and it comes slow; it’s a foggy, gradual realization and Bucky’s pretty sure that’s always been the case with this whole revival schtick, but still: it comes real fucking slow; except it’s not cold around him, as soon as he can feel his limbs again. It’s not wet and dark and alone, like it always is, always was. He’s warm, and it’s safe, and he’s pressed against a body that he knows, he can hear the screaming of a _heart_ that he knows where his ear’s up against that heat—a chest, Steve’s chest and wait, wait, there’s more than the pounding, he can hear the voice too, and he lied, it is wet in passing, in drops that fall—

“No, no, Bucky, please, don’t,” and it’s barely Steve’s voice, except it shakes in Bucky’s bones the way that only Stevie can. “Please, I can’t, you _can’t_ , oh _god_ , _no_ —”

And it’s begging, in the worst way—the _worst way_ , when Bucky’s heard that voice plead in the best; and it’s crying, it’s tears that make it wet, and that’s not right, that’s not _right_.

It is familiar, and yeah, it fucking _burns_ , but there is no escaping it, and there’s really no wanting to, not when he can hear what he hears, not when his brain syncs closer with the heart of him that knows, _knows_ that Steve is hurting, Steve’s in need, and Bucky has to be there, Bucky has to go, Bucky has to _breathe_.

So it hurts like all hell, but of course that doesn’t matter; of course Bucky breathes.

And it’s almost a luxury, that he can gasp through the pain; it’s almost a miracle that the conditioning has lapsed enough that he can choose not to fight the way it aches, that he can let his eyes shoot open and his newfound-breath catch as hard as it wants to, that he can watch Steve’s watery, red-rimmed eyes widen, disbelieving, but needing so damn much that Bucky can feel the pierce of it above all the other hurts: deeper, because it’s _Steve_.

And Steve’s mouth opens, but even as his lips move the only sound that comes out is a whine, the dead-dregs of a sob and Bucky feels Steve’s hand on his chest, pressed almost to the point of pain but Bucky’s brain and his heart are on the same page as his body, now, or fucking close enough, so he reaches with the closest hand—the left—and covers Steve’s own, presses it harder.

“Stevie,” he breathes out, lets his lungs get used to it, lets them lift the feel of his pulse into Steve’s palm all the closer, all the stronger. “Stevie, it’s okay.”

And it is, because Bucky knows what’s happened, here: he remembers taking the hit—leaping straight for it so it couldn’t get Steve and meeting it head-on, full force: too much for even him in just the right spot, at just the right angle, at just the right moment, just the right time to knock even a supersoldier’s cardiac cycle out of whack and he could feel it, the ebb of consciousness, of life as he hit the floor.

It hadn’t been the first time, though: sure as hell won’t be the last.

“Bucky,” Steve rasps, and oh, but the sound of it drags rough, draws blood where it scuffs up against Bucky’s soul, somehow; “Bucky, you were gone. There wasn’t, you weren’t,” and Bucky just holds Steve’s hand to his chest tighter, and threads fingers together with deliberate care as he stares into Steve’s eyes and tries to ground him, to keep him steady.

“But I’m here now,” he murmurs, doesn’t deny what Steve knows—only denies that it was permanent. “You can feel it, Stevie, can’t ya? I’m here, I promise, I’m sorry I scared you. I’m sorry I left for a second but I’m here—”

“ _Bucky_ ,” Steve shakes his head, and there are tears, still, and they’re leaking from the corners of Steve’s eyes again with too much speed; that voice is still too broken; “Buck, your heart stopped,” and Steve’s voice cracks, and it’s all grief in those eyes, in that sound and Bucky’s reaching from the right to catch the tears that roll down those cheekbones as Steve’s eyes close, as his breath shakes, and he breathes out like it’s the end of goddamn _everything_ : “Buck, you, there was _nothing_ —”

“The arm.” Bucky says it softly, but it falls with so much weight, so much force, and Steve just blinks, can’t comprehend even as Bucky turns Steve’s hand over in his to press his palm to Bucky’s metal one instead—Steve’s reluctant, protests with a whimper when Bucky eases his touch away from his now-beating heart.

“What?” Steve asks, willowy and hollow and oh, but Bucky’d take every hit for Steve Rogers to the day that hit does him in—still doesn’t make the way Steve worries, the way he _hurts_ for the sacrifice offered, if not made, any easier to witness, to know.

“It worked for,” Bucky cringes as he eases himself up, because he remembers too much, sometimes. “Well, it worked for a lot of things,” he decides to skip the details, get straight to the point. “Mostly cryo, at first, made it easier for just about anyone to thaw me out and put me on ice again,” and Steve’s face falls, and Bucky flinches—even the bare-bones still cut Steve hard, and Bucky can’t keep them from him, Steve always finds out when he’s holding things back, but god _damn_ , why does he keep having to cause hurt to this man, the only one who fucking _counts_?

“But in the field, if something went wrong, if I got hit,” Bucky swallows, and Steve’s eyes are still wet, but they’re asking for something, and Bucky thinks he gets it, he really does, so he eases Steve’s head down to the center of his chest and lets him rest there, cradles him close to Bucky’s skin and just breathes for a second, just breathes.

He can feel Steve’s mouth on flesh that’s bruised, but healing fast, lips pressing to the pumping blood beneath, and Bucky justs watches that head rise and fall with his breaths, watches Steve with him, because there’s not much else in the world that makes sense.

“Modified ICD,” Bucky whispers, and Steve doesn’t so much as pause in kissing his chest, in laving slow over the proof of life before him. 

“From what I understand, and from what Stark’s told me, if there’s enough oxygen in the environment, and the internal and external temperatures are up to par, it’ll shock me back.” Because of course it can’t just fix him _before_ he fucking codes, naw, that would’ve made putting him on ice too damn tricky, the bastards. 

And it’s almost like Steve hears Bucky indignation, Bucky’s latent rage because he stills, just then, and holds his open mouth against the apex of Bucky’s heart and it rights something intangible, unnamable at the very core of Bucky’s self, that warmth receiving him, that softness holding close.

“S’what kept me alive until they could collect me for maintenance more than once,” Bucky breathes; “made sure I didn’t die before they were ready to put me down.” 

And he finishes the story, sinks into the heat of Steve pressing so damn near, the line of his jaw as he turns to lay his ear back over the beat, as his breathing evens to match Bucky’s pulse.

“So you’re,” Steve’s hand is still caught in Bucky’s own, still rests on Bucky’s chest, thumb stroking back and forth like it means to make proof, caressing as if what it strokes is unfathomable. “It’s, there’s no...”

“Serum takes care of any damage done,” Bucky answers the question Steve can’t shape his words around quite yet. “I can’t count how many times it’s happened, but there’s never been any lasting side-effects.” His lips curl up in a grimace as he shrugs just a little, not enough to jar Steve where he lies.

“Ain’t exactly pleasant, but,” Bucky looks down at the arm that brought him back from the dark, hero of the hour that it is, and feels Steve’s eyes on it as his throat gets tight and he bites his lip, tries to alleviate the weight that’s taking hold: “Well, to just call it handy feels a little cheap.”

“I,” Steve exhales, long and slow, and heavy: one beat, and another, and again. 

“Bucky, I can’t do this without you,” he finally grates out, and Bucky’s convinced he’d taste blood in Steve’s mouth just then if he presses his lips there; he’d taste iron and heartbreak because he can hear the tearing, he can feel the echoes as Steve whispers, haunted: “not _again_.”

“Stevie—”

“I can go through the motions,” Steve cuts off the protest he’s heard too many times; “yeah, sure. I’ve done that. Done a piss-poor fucking _job_ of that, but it seems to pass muster these days, so long as I make sure the aliens don’t kill all the civilians, no one asks too many questions, I don’t have to explain why...” 

And oh, but the bitter ache in that voice is something Bucky could kill his own self twice-over for ever letting live there, for never keeping away because it doesn’t fit, it was never meant to _fit_ ; not with _Steve_.

And maybe Bucky was going to give it; maybe he wasn’t—Bucky doesn’t quite know, really, because yes: Steve can survive, Steve has Survived, Steve _will_ survive and the world needs Steve fucking Rogers for as long as he can stand to give because he makes it turn _brighter_ , goddamnit—but if Bucky knows anything, if he’s learned a thing or two in this, in all of it, from falling to forgetting, to feeling and waking up in arms that love: if he knows anything in the sum of it, it’s that the world is a cruel place to live alone, and Stevie shouldn’t have to suffer. Never, _never_ should Steve have to just go through the motions when all that Steve _is_ is made of light and energy and all the vibrant color that he couldn’t hold in his brittle bones, and couldn’t see quite right for his ailing eyes, and fuck, fuck—

To put Steve Rogers through nothing more than the goddamn _motions_ isn’t all that much better than sending him into the dark.

“I can go through the motions,” Steve tells him again, voice so small, and his hand on Bucky’s chest is clinging, the only thing that gives away that he’s about to break, to tear at the seams; “and was a worser fate, more days than it wasn’t, but I can do it, I have done it.”

He turns, but keeps an ear still to Bucky’s heart, close enough to hear as it cracks when he looks Bucky in the eye, when he breathes out:

“But Buck,” and Steve’s eyes are clear, but swimming—his soul’s so fucking _sad_ behind them and Bucky aches with it, and he’ll come back from the dead a million times over and brave the worst of burning to keep this at bay, this despair that sears in his heart so much fucking harder, so much _worse_ than electrical current and dragging back from the brink—this is the thing that will undo him, and he can’t allow for it to happen, he can’t let Steve know it ever again, he—

“Bucky,” Steve’s voice grounds him, and sometimes Bucky wonders what they are outside each other—he knows they’re both people, they’ll both make do, but Bucky only feels like this when it’s Steve, so while he hates the words that come out next, he gets it, he gets it where it’s written on the bones of him, on the chambers in his pounding heart:

“I will _not survive_ losing you again.”

And it’s a fact. It’s a fact, more than a promise, though maybe it’s both, and Bucky doesn’t know how to fault him, how to protest, how to make heads or tails of it when his pulse is pounding out agreement, is thrumming at the same damned pitch because he can’t, they can’t, not again, it’s been too much, they won’t.

“Do you understand?” Steve asks, lips against the hum of his heart under the skin, kissing soft, and Bucky wraps an arm around him, pulls him closer as his left hand on Steve’s own clutches tight, gathers him flush against the skin and wishes to god and the angels and anyone listening that he can keep this, that he can take Steve into his skin somehow as deep as he’s written in his bones, in the marrow: he prays it as hard as he ever prayed for Steve’s life against a fever, for his own against the cold, because this is their lives, this is all there is.

“Yeah,” Bucky whispers, and presses his mouth hard, pours what he can into a kiss to the top of Steve’s head. “Yeah, I understand, punk.” He nuzzles Steve’s temple until he turns to meet Bucky’s eyes: “But that works both ways, you know.” 

And Steve doesn’t say anything, doesn’t nod: but he knows.

They both know. They can’t do anything less.

“I need you,” Steve’s speaking against him, into him, straight through between the squeezing of the heart in his chest: “I need this as much as you do,” Steve whispers through to the muscle, to the veins, and Bucky shudders, chest tight like it damn well heard him, too: “Okay?”

And Bucky can’t help it; he reaches and turns Steve so he’s spread face to face across Bucky’s prone body, here on the fringes of a battle winding down, safe for the moment in the shadows: Bucky lets them have this as he pulls Steve to him, chest to chest and kisses him until he can’t think, can’t breathe, can’t _be_ outside the feeling of Steve’s lips on his own and they’re both panting hard when they break away: message fucking received.

Okay.

“You scared the hell out of me,” Steve murmurs against the corner of Bucky’s mouth, sounds so small.

“I ain’t leaving you, Stevie,” Bucky whispers right back, fierce as hell. “Not ever again.”

And they breathe there, they let the truth in it, in them: they let it linger until Bucky can feel Steve’s pulse, but only just: calm again. Sated. Held against his own where it belongs, and safe, and Bucky’s too busy marveling at it, amidst the ruin, to notice Steve’s attention shift, to see the way he takes Bucky’s left hand in his own and lifts it, considers it so close.

So fucking _warm_.

“You were right,” Steve says, solemn and grateful and choked behind the words; “to call it handy’s a fucking insult.”

Bucky blinks, remembers: oh.

“No it isn’t.”

Steve quirks a brow at him, almost offended on the goddamned arm’s behalf, and Bucky leans, pretends to consider it just as closely, if slightly-less affectionately than Steve’s currently doing.

“S’just callin’ it what it is,” Bucky shrugs, bends it at the elbow, opens his palm and rotates his wrists slow, demonstratively as he deadpans: “ _Hand_ y.”

And the laughter sure as fuck bubbles from Steve, raucous and unrestrained and desperate and too much for the stupid pun but necessary between them, all the poison and fear and loss transformed, made light and expelled because it can’t stay here, not between them, not when they’re both still breathing.

“Fucking _hell_ , Buck,” Steve chokes, shakes with giddy humor and Bucky can’t help himself from joining in, because it dispels the weight around them, makes the fear seem far away, and Bucky will do anything to keep Steve’s voice strong, and big, and everywhere; Bucky will do everything to make Steve smile, to keep Steve happy, to be there to see it until the end of the goddamned line.

“C’mon Stevie,” Bucky groans as he makes to sit up; Steve scrambles to stand, and he’s gonna do it, he’s gonna stretch out his arm before Bucky can put the icing on the cake; “gimme a _hand_ —”

“Don’t you fucking dare, asshole,” Steve cuts him off, but too late; Bucky’s cackling as he takes Steve’s offered hand with his left and leverages himself upward against Steve’s weight, tests his body: functional. Ready to go. “You’re not funny.”

Steve’s a shitty liar, but even if he wasn’t, the smirk kinda gives him away.

“I’m _hilarious_ ,” Bucky shoots back, grinning cheekily as he draws Steve in for one more kiss, long and hard, before letting go and moving to give up their cover.

“Bucky,” Steve’s got a hand on his arm, holding him back. Bucky meets his eyes in askance.

“Be careful.” And the words are soft, vulnerable, and Bucky grabs Steve’s hand and squeezes tight before he turns back to what’s left of the battle, Steve at his side, as it should be. As it will be. Over Bucky’s dead body will it happen any other way.

And Bucky Barnes is a notoriously hard man to put down.

~~~~~~

That night, in their bed, after they’ve fucked themselves sore for proof of life—and fine, okay, “handy” _is_ an inadequate term for the way that fucking arm held Steve up against the wall for the better part of a goddamned hour while Bucky proved again, and again, and again just how _alive_ they both were, here and now—but in their bed, where Bucky’s sprawled out boneless, and Steve’s making his way up and down Bucky’s body, methodical, worshipful, kissing every inch to red before soothing it against his tongue so as to come back and do it all again: in their bed, Steve presses his mouth against the whole of him, every curve and line of him adored as Steve explores, as Steve tastes life and the promise of tomorrow, and all the tomorrows left between them in Bucky’s skin.

And somehow, impossible: in the metal of Bucky’s left arm.

Because Steve doesn’t shy from it. In fact, he might dwell on it the longest, might come back and lavish affection on it the most. His lips are warm, are featherlight pressure and then full weight and presence, and Bucky doesn’t know why the arm needed to know the difference, why it was engineered that way, what utility it could have had or purpose it might have served—and in Bucky’s hopeful moments, in his silly fantasies he wonders if he’s changed the programming, somehow, wired as it is to his nerves, to his brain: he wonders if sheer want and aching, and the serum and the fullness in his chest in the face of Steve and all that Steve is and all that Steve _means_ could have made that touch register stronger, closer, better: he doesn’t know how, or why, but Bucky’s grateful, Bucky could goddamn sob for how grateful he is because he doesn’t have to look, doesn’t have to open his eyes and watch when Steve licks against the metal plates, when Steve kisses the ugly ridges of skin where it connects into steel, he doesn’t have to wonder what the roughness of Steve’s tastebuds against every ridge and juncture feels like, even if he does wonder what the fuck he tastes: but he doesn’t have to imagine it, he can know it, and if Steve’s mouth on his skin makes him breathless, he’s wondering how his heart’s still trapped inside his chest for the way Steve’s lips against his left arm drives him fucking insane. 

_His_ left arm.

And maybe it’s funny; maybe it’s a long time in coming—maybe it’s been a long road none of ‘em should’ve had to walk, but Steve’s peppering impossibly quick kisses to the juncture of skin and metal again, front to back before he works back down toward Bucky’s fingers, as he sucks each one between his lips and then pulls off, kisses the fingertip down to each knuckle before moving to the next, and the next, and then next to do the same, and it’s incredible, it’s impossible, it’s real and Bucky _aches_ with it, because he’s got Steve, and Steve doesn’t care about anything beyond the fact that he’s got Bucky in kind, and Steve loves him beyond all reason, beyond any goddamn sense, and it’s all that Bucky’s ever been hoping for, ever needed more than air, ever wanted more than he thought he could stand, and he’s got it: here. It’s real. It’s not going anywhere.

And the metal at his left: abomination, monstrosity, weapon, murderer, mindless, _heartless_ —

Loved.

Loved, because there’s no other word for the way Steve’s touching it, touching him—my _god_ , it can only be that.

And if Bucky adds up all the killing, all the damage, all the hurt: there’s no erasing it, there’s no making it go away, or evening a score. Lives don’t follow those rules.

But when he takes what came after, what comes after in the now, between them: when he considers every ache that’s been eased, every wound that’s been closed, every bullet that arm’s taken for him, for his heart in Steve’s chest and kept them both alive to fight another day; when he thinks about the pleasure he can bring to Steve, to both of them, the way he can take them both apart and make them pant, make them break, make them new in ways he’d never dreamed of, in ways he’d never known could _be_ , before—when he thinks about his own self, his own life, and thinks about what would have been lost had he stayed down just hour before, if he’d not woke gasping to the land of the living again: when he thinks about Steve’s face before he’d seen that Bucky was breathing; when he thinks about this moment, here and now between them, when he thinks about not having this, about giving this up, about sacrificing this warmth and this _feeling_ to the dark—

Then, okay. Okay.

If the arm can help keep them here, keep them breathing, keep them wrapped up in each other, then okay: he can accept it. If that’s the trade-off, if that’s the way this evens-out—Steve’s mouth on his body without reservation, and Steve’s left hand in his right hand splayed wide across his chest—then fine. Fine. More than fine.

If this is what it gets him: okay.

The arm can fucking stay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you're interested, come say hey on [tumblr](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com/post/106572658227/fic-your-left-hand-man-6-6-complete)—I love making new friends :)

**Author's Note:**

> On [tumblr](http://hitlikehammers.tumblr.com/post/104933473597/fic-your-left-hand-man-1-6).


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